The new ASUS GeForce GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II OC successfully improves on the already excellent NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti reference design. It comes overclocked out of the box with a base clock of 954 MHz and Boost 2.0 works well with the card, ensuring well over 1050 MHz during typical gaming. As a result, the card is 6% faster than the GTX 780 Ti reference design, 14% faster than the R9 290X in "uber" mode, and 19% faster than AMD's R9 290. It would have been nice if ASUS had overclocked the memory, too. We found plenty of headroom to do so in our manual OC tests. Compare the card to other GTX 780 Ti cards and the ASUS DC II OC roughly sits in the middle in terms of clock speed, but the differences are small, amounting to around ±1% in real life performance.
The big ASUS Direct CU cooler immediately catches your attention with its bulky, powerful looks. Out of the box, it comes in a clean, all-black color you can match to go with the rest of your system through either the red or golden stickers included in the box. Looking at noise and temperature results, I'll say that I expected better. Noise levels almost exactly match those of the reference design, which is certainly "not bad," but I was hoping for a significant reduction in noise levels. Right now, I'm testing the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming, which does much better here, so it is possible after all. Temperatures are perfectly fine, reaching 80°C under load, which is well below the 85°C temperature limit of NVIDIA's Boost 2.0 algorithm beyond which the card will start reducing clocks to keep cool. I really like the included backplate because it gives the card a more complete feel while protecting it against damage during handling.
Priced at around $730, the ASUS GTX 780 Ti Direct CU II OC is certainly not cheap, but it is very, very fast. The only card on the market that can beat its performance is the HD 7990, and while AMD's card is 2% faster, it is also more expensive and suffers from horrible coil whine. Everything else on the market is slower, but might also offer a better price/performance ratio. If noise is not an issue for you, AMD's recent R9 290/X does better in that metric. but falls short when looking at power, heat, temperature, noise, and availability. Compared to other custom GTX 780 Ti designs on the market, the ASUS GTX 780 Ti DC II OC is solid, and you'll be a happy gamer with it, but I feel that other cards offer slightly better value (Palit) or better noise (MSI) or better clocks (EVGA).